Georg Wilhelm Pabst was an Austrian film director and screenwriter. He started as an actor and theater director, before becoming one of the most influential German-language filmmakers during the Weimar Republic.
Carl Theodor Dreyer, commonly known as Carl Th. Dreyer, was a Danish film director and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers in history, his movies are noted for emotional austerity and slow, stately pacing, frequent themes of social intolerance, the inseparability of fate and death, and the power of evil in earthly life.
Louis Feuillade was a French filmmaker of the silent era. Between 1906 and 1924, he directed over 630 films. He is primarily known for the crime serials Fantômas, Les Vampires and Judex made between 1913 and 1916.
Yılmaz Güney 1 April 1937 – 9 September 1984) was a Kurdish film director, screenwriter, novelist, actor and communist political activist. He quickly rose to prominence in the Turkish film industry. Many of his works were made from a far-left perspective and devoted to the plight of working-class people in Turkey. Güney won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982 for the film Yol which he co-produced with Şerif Gören. He was at constant odds with the Turkish government over the portrayal of Kurdish culture, people and language.
Jean Epstein was a French filmmaker, film theorist, literary critic, and novelist. Although he is remembered today primarily for his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, he directed three dozen films and was an influential critic of literature and film from the early 1920s through the late 1940s. He is often associated with French Impressionist Cinema and the concept of photogénie.
Yol is a 1982 Turkish film directed by Yılmaz Güney and Şerif Gören. The screenplay was written by Güney, and directed by his assistant Gören, as Güney was in prison at the time. Later, after Güney escaped from Imrali prison, he took the negatives of the film to Switzerland and later edited it in Paris.
Kurdish culture is a group of distinctive cultural traits practiced by Kurdish people. The Kurdish culture is a legacy from ancient peoples who shaped modern Kurds and their society.
Kurdish cinema focuses on the Kurdish people and culture. The fate of the Kurds as a people without a state shaped their cinema. Kurdish films often show social grievances, oppression, torture, human rights violations, and life as a stranger. Kurdish cinema has a high significance for the Kurds, as it offers the opportunity to draw attention to their own situation artistically. However, because of state repression, most films are produced in exile. The best example of this is in Turkey, where Kurds were not permitted to speak their native language until 1991, which made the development of their films more difficult.
Kurds in the United States refers to people born in or residing in the United States of Kurdish origin or those considered to be ethnic Kurds.
Jano Rosebiani is a Kurdish American filmmaker. He is the winner of numerous international awards and has been listed in the top 35 world filmmakers in the book "Cineaste Uit De Schaduw" by Belgian celebrity photographer Kris De Witte.
The Duhok International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Duhok, Kurdistan Region. Each year Duhok IFF presents new and exciting cinema from the Kurdish Cinema and beyond. The 8th edition was held from November 11 to 18, 2021 which focused on Afghanistan.
Mehmet Aktaş is a Kurdish filmmaker, producer, author, and journalist. He is born in Turkey but lives in Germany. He is the founder and chief executive of the film production and distribution company, Mîtosfilm, in Berlin.
The Sulaymaniyah Museum, or Slemani Museum, is an archeological museum located in Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. It is the second largest museum in Iraq, after the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad. It houses artifacts dating from the prehistoric period to the late Islamic and Ottoman periods. Several halls of the museum have undergone renovation work and the museum was closed to the public for refurbishment from October 1, 2018, to October 2019.
Bina Majid Mustafa, known as Bina Qeredaxi, was born in 1988 in Duhok, Kurdistan Region of Iraq. She is a filmmaker and media specialist with over nine years of experience in filmmaking, Television industry and cultural management. Bina has earned her BA in Law and Politics in 2010 at University of Duhok but started her film and media career in 2007 with writing and directing a popular social awareness-raising show named for Kurdistan TV channel, followed by several other TV shows in lead Kurdish channels. In the past years, she worked in different positions in award-winning films such as "Bekas" by Karzan Kadir. She is the co-founder and program manager of Duhok International Film Festival.
İmralı prison is a high-security prison on the island of İmralı in the Sea of Marmara in Turkey. It holds prisoners from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and one prisoner of the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist–Leninist (TKP/ML). The prison facility is guarded by the military and is also monitored over satellite imagery from space. The prison is a witness to several memorable moments in Turkish history.
Kurdistan +100: Stories from a Future State is a book edited by Orsola Casagrande and Mustafa Gündoğdu published in 2023 by Comma Press. The work is an anthology of short stories by thirteen contemporary Kurdish writers, envisioning a possible Kurdish future in 2046, the 100 year anniversary of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad. The book has been described as the first anthology of Kurdish science fiction and as a collection of futuristic fiction.
1001 Apples is a 2013 Kurdish documentary film that focuses on five Kurdish survivors of the Anfal campaign. The film won the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Documentary Film in 2014.
Qarachatan is a Kurdish village at the foot of Mt. Piramagrun in Sulaymaniyah Governorate in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Qarachatan is renowned for its archaeological significance, particularly the Rabana-Merquly site, a major regional center of the Parthian Empire. Located on the western flank of Mount Piramagrun, the Parthian-era complex at Rabana-Merquly consists of two settlements connected by an extensive network of perimeter fortifications.
Agit translated as Lament,) is a 1972 Turkish film directed by Yılmaz Güney. The screenplay was written by Güney and produced for his production company, Güney Film.
I Want to Live is a 2015 Kurdish documentary film directed by Karzan Kardozi. The film focuses on Shndar, a young Kurdish boy with thalassemia disease living in a refugee camp with his family in Kurdistan Region of Iraq as he recall his life during Syrian Civil War and ISIS attack on Kurdistan.
